An online merchant may provide a number of items for sale to customers over the Internet. These items may include, but are not limited to, goods, services, digital media, downloadable music, streaming movies, and the like. Customers may access information regarding the available items through a website or other information service provided by the online merchant. The information regarding the items may include that information needed by the customer to identify and purchase a particular item, such as the name and description of the item, the price and availability of the item, and the like. In order to enhance the online shopping experience and allow the customer to fully research a particular item, the online merchant may provide additional item information along with the purchase information. The additional item information may include details or technical specifications for the item, a list of features, and customer reviews of the item.
The customer reviews may allow a potential purchaser to evaluate what other customers think about the item. The customer reviews may, for example, include a quantitative rating of the item as well as free-form comments provided by the customers regarding their impression of the item and its features, their experience with the item, their overall satisfaction with the item, and the like. For many popular items available from the online merchant, there may exist hundreds or thousands of customer reviews, covering many varied aspects of the item. However, this large number of reviews may present too much information for some customers to digest, even if provided with tools to sort the reviews by rating, helpfulness, and other qualifiers of the reviews. Accordingly, much helpful information contained in the customer reviews for an item may go untapped by potential purchasers.
While embodiments are described herein by way of example for several embodiments and illustrative drawings, those skilled in the art will recognize that embodiments are not limited to the embodiments or drawings described. It should be understood, that the drawings and detailed description thereto are not intended to limit embodiments to the particular form disclosed, but on the contrary, the intention is to cover all modifications, equivalents and alternatives falling within the spirit and scope as defined by the appended claims. The headings used herein are for organizational purposes only and are not meant to be used to limit the scope of the description or the claims. As used throughout this application, the word “may” is used in a permissive sense (i.e., meaning having the potential to), rather than the mandatory sense (i.e., meaning must). Similarly, the words “include”, “including”, and “includes” mean including, but not limited to.